


s o u n d p r o o f

by conned_by_connwaer



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Child Abuse, Dark, Dictator, Dystopia, Gen, Hovercars, Inspired by North Korea, Mental Instability, Plotty, Pop music, Propoganda, Psychological Drama, Rebellion, Science Fiction, Set in the nitty-gritty future, Smuggling, Whump, dysfunction junction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-27 04:31:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15678063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/conned_by_connwaer/pseuds/conned_by_connwaer
Summary: (Intro) - The balloon man(Verse) - The newcomer(Pre-chorus) - The school(Refrain) - The night life(Bridge) - The low life(Outro) - The border... When sound gets into her soundproof world, Coda realizes she can getout.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Over_the_moon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Over_the_moon/gifts).



Part 1: Intro

The wind blew south today. Quitem Mex stood squinting in the cold pre-dawn light, crunching the gravel beneath his boots. He looked for color in his surroundings and found none. The landscape was still and stark as white bone, with trash heaped like mountains across the horizon. Quitem saw a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye and turned to look. It was a shiny dumpster hovercraft, unloading in the air. Trash rained down.

Quitem wasn’t a high maintenance guy. He was poor growing up, so he was used to making do with what he could get his hands on. He was good with his hands in general. The wedding ring he gave his wife was made from rare wood he’d bought from a lethargic street vendor in the rain. The wood was soft and dark from being wet and as he held it in his hands it reminded him of her hair. After he finished carving the ring he presented it to her with a sort of self satisfied sheepishness, to which she replied: _A cheap ring for a cheap girl from a cheap man._ Oh well. Cheapness was Quitem’s oldest friend. His current house was an abandoned underground bomb shelter. He kicked his hologram to life and taped his shitty hovercar up until it fell apart. But if there was one thing he envied others for, it was their view. What he wouldn’t give to see the ocean from his window in a breezy coastal port, like Roanker. 

Up until two months ago, Quitem had actually lived in the main city farther from the waste lands. The view there was all skyscrapers and jumbotrons, with a dash of smog. He was doing okay there, but his neighbours complained about his hobby. Then his wife walked out on him. The wind was blowing south that day as well and as he put on his shoes and gathered his equipment in preparation his wife stood in front of the door brandishing her holo. His own face projected from the screen, along with the heading: _Balloon Man Incites Hometown and Enemy Rage._ He left anyway. He had a job to do. When he returned he knew right away that she was gone, like triggering a sixth sense. The black room was too dark and already felt old. The window was open and through it Quitem could see neon lights and that was all. After a visit from a few government guys he’d had enough, so he packed his things and rehabilitated here. It was an awful place to live. But it was perfect for his mission. 

The weather was also perfect now. Clear, dry eye skies and a steady south bound wind. Quitem scuffed his boots across the gravel a few more times before turning back towards his home. The only part of the shelter visible above ground was a steel trap door angled slightly upwards. Solar panels lay like shards of mirrors across the ground. Quitem made his way through the grid until he reached his hovercar, an ancient pile of scrap metal. Hooked to the back was a platform housing a large tank of hydrogen. Quitem knocked his knuckles on the tank before he got in to the driver’s seat and powered up. 

_Good morning, Quitem Mex_ , a genderless automated voice said. In setup mode Quitem had chosen this voice because it sounded the least human. The words good morning blinked across the windshield twice before fading as they were replaced by normal stats. 

Quitem said, “Hey Cicero, how are you?”

The voice paused. Quitem could almost hear the gears turning. He rarely initiated conversation, and Cicero had learned and adapted over the years to say as little as possible. The machine had also realized Quitem preferred when it didn’t project emojis onto the windshield. After reviewing past conversations, Cicero seemed to have decided on the proper course of action.

_I’m doing well. You seem like you’re in a good mood, haha. Are we going anywhere fun today?_

“No.” Quitem sighed and rubbed his hands over his face. “Just the usual. You drive. I’m gonna try to get some shut eye.”

_No music this time? I’ve been listening to the newest hits._

“Maybe on the way back, but so far I’ve already got all the data disks updated with new stuff.”

 _Well then._ After these words Cicero fell silent. Quitem wondered if it even knew what he was talking about. Probably. The hovercar had access to the news and drove him out to the middle of nowhere whenever the weather was right. Now it was offering to play the latest music. Goosebumps broke out over Quitem’s arms but he managed to convince himself it was because of the AC.

“Cicero, raise the temperature a little,” Quitem said. His tone was almost accusing, and he hurried to correct it. “Thanks that’s perfect, goodnight.”

 _Good night, Quitem Mex_ , the voice replied, with a touch of humor coloring its sharp edges.

The words _good night_ flashed across the windshield twice, and then Quitem closed his eyes and drifted off.

***

_Quitem Mex? We’ve arrived._

The drive out to the border wouldn’t have taken long. 20 minutes max, usually less. There were no roads or traffic or signs of life around here, just the wastelands and their steel dunes spotted with rainbow plastic, frosted glass bottles, dented cans. Even so, Quitem felt refreshed. He took perverse pride in his ability to fall deeply asleep in strange and unfamiliar positions and places. 

On Quitem’s third date with his wife, in his tiny bachelor's apartment humming with awkward giddiness, he watched her get up to open the window and stick a hand out under the rain. Water droplets broke and split and snailed across her synthetic fingers, the product of a workplace laboratory accident. A perfect picture: rain drumming and him staring at the back of her orange windbreaker. The thought, _I love you_ , floated up in his mind like silt displaced from a riverbed, and then he was asleep. 

That memory was bittersweet. Like most things involving his wife, it had gone stale. She used to tease him with it before they went to bed, cracking jokes about him needing beauty sleep. In the time leading up to her leaving, she cited it as evidence that he’d been bored of her even then. _I can’t compete with your obsession anymore._

“I’m obsessed, yes,” Quitem muttered to himself. “Even you couldn’t stop me.”

Cicero said, _I didn’t quite catch that. Could you repeat yourself?_

Quitem cut the power and got out. 

The sun had now climbed over the horizon, rouging the blank paper sky. Gold fingers of light and seeping red blood; hints of blue showing through. Quitem walked around his hovercar until he got to the connected platform. There was the tank of hydrogen, and beside it, six covered crates nestled near a bundle of clear deflated balloons, draped like washed up jellyfish. 

Quitem picked up one of the balloons, shook it out, and wrapped its opening around a nozzle protruding from the tank. Its spiked knob squeaked and stuck like glue as he twisted it. Rust flaked off and fluttered to the ground. Hydrogen hissed out and began to fill the balloon, crinkling the plastic. When the balloon was full he tied it off and stopped the gas flow. It now had the shape of a barrel and reached a length of 25 feet. Quitem did this for all 24 balloons, laying them out on the ground like corpses and weighing them down with nets. 

“Almost done, don’t worry,” Quitem muttered to himself. “I’m getting too old for this… ” He made three trips to and from the back of his hovercar carrying two of the crates at a time stacked on top of each other. After setting the last crate on the ground he crouched down and wiped his forehead on his sleeve. He whipped the cover off of a crate. Inside were four lumpy bundles tied with paracord to a heavy chrome carabiner. Each bundle would be attached to its own balloon. 

When Quitem finished his work he stood, knees clicking, and stretched his arms, raising them to the sky in triumph. Then he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a wooden ring. His wife’s ring, left on the ledge of an open window on a day the wind blew south. He stared at it, rubbing his thumb gently over the engraving on the inside of the band. _Sending you love south._ The words made his hands tremble and his heart ache with guilt like it was being wrung out. He’d promised his clever, inventive wife he would love her always. That they would change the world together. But the south bound wind stole his heart away, and now it would steal away this ring. 

Quitem opened one of the carabiners and slipped the ring on. He wondered who would find this package and hoped it was someone like his wife. Serious and silly. Proud enough to step away from a doomed relationship. Not someone like him, selfish and cowardly and unhappy. Obsessively chasing after dreams, only to fall back into apathy. 

Quitem snatched away the weighted net. The balloons rose slowly at first, dragging their loads across the ground. Then they picked up speed and lifted straight up into the air, dancing on the wind. 

Quitem felt lighter already.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi it's me, Conn! I'm new to ao3 and this is my first work. I've planned this out to be very long, however I am a slow writer, so updates will be sort of sporadic, especially once school starts up. Don't worry if the beginning is confusing. ;)  
> Hope you enjoyed. <(^_^)>


	2. Chapter 2

Part 2: Verse

Day 145

At 5:30 am the white hovercars set off on their daily routes, weaving through the city of Nequam over dusty dirt roads. Each car was equipped with four loudspeakers facing out on the car roof. One of the drivers was still half asleep, foggy eyed with fingers loose on the wheel, like a shy handshake. Rain pattered against the window pane, making tiny satellites that merged with one another and slipped away into streams. Through the window the driver could see stacked, flat roofed houses, stained and peeling. He brought the car to a stop in front of a burgundy house with painted windows and a blanket weighed down with bricks on the roof. Then he popped his collar, put his head in his arms, and closed his eyes. _I just need a quick break._ He was asleep.

In the burgundy house, Coda was also asleep. Face down on the mattress and clutching a medatel with the data disc still loaded on it. Drooling across the pillow. 

At 6:00 am sharp the loudspeakers on the white hovercars scattered through Nequam coughed. Feedback shrieked, then Tritum’s national anthem, _Falling in Love with my Country_ , began to play. A cheerful woman’s voice poured chocolate into the ears of thousands of people as they woke to the same blood orange sun. 

The driver outside the burgundy house startled awake and drove away, swearing. Inside, Coda jerked upright into a sitting position and covered her ears. The brassy music remained clear as day, loud enough she winced and scrunched her eyes closed. When the song trailed off she sighed and dropped her shoulders in relief, but even then she could still hear it ricocheting around her skull. Jazz rubbed her the wrong way. If she couldn’t predict the rhythm to things it made her uncomfortable. She wouldn’t have felt this way last year or even five months ago. But now she could put a name to it. Now she wanted something else.

Coda flopped back down and pushed the pillow over her head, smothering a groan. Her body ached like it’d been hit by a car. Her bones felt hollow and heavy, her eyes hard and dry like glass. Pain stabbed through her temples and pulled at her eyelids. She really should’ve gotten more sleep. Last night she’d stayed up so late her mother came back home and birds sang outside her window. She had just paused the holostream she was watching on the medatel and taken off her headset when she heard them, ominous and twinkling, like the sound of bells. Little chirps that sent a nerve wrecking wave of anxiety over her. The feeling that said, _I did something bad_. 

Staring at the ashy ceiling, Coda almost regretted staying up the night before. Almost. It was like pressing on a bruise. She’d never been the most driven or stable person anyways. And if things worked out today as she planned, soon none of this would matter. 

10 minutes later, Coda got up to hide the medatel and data discs. She jumped back onto the mattress and pulled the blanket over her face. 10 minutes after that she rolled off of the mattress and onto the floor. She was greeted by her school uniform, crumpled and sporting a stale smell. Khaki trousers and a matching double breasted jacket belted over a white button up. She sluggishly pulled on her clothes, locating her balled up socks across the room and lacing up her threadbare boots last. Then she went to her desk and picked up a red badge decorated with the face of the Supreme Leader, a bronze star pin, and a wooden ring. She pinned the badge and bronze star to her lapel and put the ring in her jacket pocket. Next she opened the desk drawer and pulled out a fat envelope. After undoing the top two buttons of her shirt she shoved the envelope under her collar and rebuttoned the shirt up to her neck. Then she grabbed her canvas bag and walked out the door. 

In the living room, her mother Yesin was passed out on the futon. Coda paused to look at her, narrowing her eyes. Yesin was turned with her back towards her, hair still pinned up in big curls. She couldn’t see her mother’s face but she probably still had colorful makeup caked on. An uncorked wine bottle sat empty on the floor, surrounded by wrinkled tissues. Coda hadn’t heard her crying the evening before and she’d been hesitantly hopeful. Sitting in stomach clenching silence to check before putting on her headset and starting the holostream. But of course nothing had changed. She laughed bitterly and shook her head, annoyed with herself. 

When she looked back, Yesin was sitting up and staring straight at her. 

Coda jumped. “Heh, you scared me… “ 

“Where are you going?” Yesin’s voice was congested and whiny. She sounded like a little girl. Her lower lip trembled and tears slipped out of her eyes. The sight sent a spike of something cold sizzling through Coda, something dark and slimy that she refused to acknowledge. But it soon overflowed and came oozing out, those shameful feelings. 

Rage first. Irrational, all consuming **dislike** that burned her face even as her expression remained impassive. She wanted to punch her, like Yesin’s ex-boyfriends liked to do. Drop her bag, watch her flinch in fear at the sound. Stalk towards her and draw her arm back, relishing. Then the solid smack, and her fist tingling pleasantly with fire ants. She’d hit her to make the crying stop. Whatever it took to make the crying stop. Only, that didn’t make sense at all, because Yesin would just cry harder. 

It didn’t make sense at all.

Disgust swooped down, like a vulture smelling the rotted carcass of her heart and soul. A full body shudder in reaction to her mother, but mostly herself. The calculating, cold blooded creature reaching through the bars of her ribcage. Coda was embarrassed of it. 

She really looked at Yesin then, clinical, capturing each detail as if she was observing a centipede crawling across the ground. Yesin had a plain face that was pretty from certain angles, soft and welcoming. Coda looked nothing like her. Yesin’s nose was red from rubbing. Her eyes were ringed in pink and orange eyeshadow, a present from Coda. She’d bought the pricey item two weeks ago, setting back the date of her plan to today. The bright sunbeam colors made her remember her mother applying cheap neon eyeshadow in the bathroom mirror at midnight. The tones Yesin usually used sucked the life from her face and aged her by years. When Coda saw the golden compact that the river merchant was offering she had conjured up an image of Yesin wearing these new colors, radiant and smiling. She bought it without bothering to ask for the price. Before leaving for school the next morning she left it on the kitchen table with the brand name scratched out. Yesin didn’t say anything about it but she didn’t cry that evening. She hummed while she did her makeup and left at midnight with a spring in her step.

Now Yesin was crying again. Her eyeshadow didn’t budge, so it was good for something at least. 

“Well? I asked you where you were going.” It took a while for Yesin to finish her sentence through her hiccuping. 

“School, of course,” Coda said dryly. Yesin covered her mouth and muffled a wet sob.

“What? What is it?” Coda demanded, alarmed. Her arms were awkward weights at her sides. She debated putting her hands in her pockets but feared any sort of movement would tip the scale and set off the mounting tension in the room, like a spark to gunpowder. 

Yesin shook her head slowly. “No, it’s nothing. Nothing to bother you with.”

“It’s obviously something.” Annoyance stirred inside her and reared its ugly head. 

“The way you look at me sometimes,” Yesin began, “it’s like you don’t have any feelings. Coda, do you hate me?”

The rage was back, this time laced with something steely and acidic. There was a voice in her head hissing in hurt about Yesin’s _lies and accusations_ , frustrated and vengeful. There was also a child’s voice. _Shut up_ , the child said to the other voice. _Say you’re sorry_.

“I’m sorry,” Coda said. 

“Your apology means shit.” Yesin’s mouth was a straight, greenish white line, but tears still ran down her face. The mixed signals made Coda’s mind go blank.

For her, anger and sadness rarely mixed. The first stemmed from stinging fury, followed by the icy thrill of exacting revenge. Waiting silently for the bullies to come around the corner with a metal pipe, still seething from the personal offense. The second was more familiar, a deep bone ache that sapped the strength from her limbs and cast a shadow over everything. For Yesin there were no such boundaries. All emotions were laid bare on her face like an open book, a test to see how well Coda could read. A test she failed each time. 

Coda was completely clueless when it came to her mother. She had tried remembering their past arguments, but doing so made her realize she didn’t know why they were fighting in the first place. The fights were pretty one sided too. There was a grey tint over everything that made it hard to recall. Details slipped through her fingers like sand. The weird, ensuing drop in her stomach wasn’t pleasant either.

Some special memories managed to stay. Coda thought about one in particular, from when she was a child. She remembered waking up to the hair raising sensation of being watched. As she had blinked sleep from her eyes the image of her mother, straddling her and breathing hard with a knife held to her throat, sharpened into cold clarity. She turned to a block of ice under her, wide eyed and shivering with a hummingbird’s heart. 

“Mommy?” she asked. “Mommy what’s wrong?” Her teeth chattered. She reached out a small hand to cup Yesin’s face, and with that Yesin broke down. She sobbed uncontrollably, the knife jerking like a snake in her hands. The blade dug into Coda’s skin. Yesin threw the knife away. 

“Oh sweetie, I love you so much, you know that, I love you.” She kept talking even as she put her arms around her. After a few minutes of immobilization the national anthem began to play. Coda pulled away and crawled off the mattress in a daze. She barely noticed the sting of putting her palm on the knife. 

Yesin noticed. “Oh my god! Let me get a bandage.” She ran out of the room. When she came back in she made Coda sit in her lap and hold out her hand so she could bandage it. Then she tipped Coda’s head back and ruffled her hair. 

“You’re okay,” she whispered incredulously, touching her neck. “I didn’t hurt you. You’re fine.”

The irony of the situation hit Coda hard. Her neck was unscathed and she cut her own self on the knife. Yesin hadn’t hurt her at all. 

Coda wished she had left a scar. 

After that incident, Coda had trouble sleeping at night. Rubbing a hand over the back of her neck, Coda looked her mother in the eyes and said, “I love you. Goodbye.” Emphasis on the goodbye.

Yesin lay down and busied herself with arranging the blankets, getting ready to sleep. Tucking herself in with a sigh. “You know I love you too. More than you’ll ever know.” 

Coda took that as her cue to leave. She walked backwards to the front door, taking a last look around. She had expected to feel sorry, for items to leap out at her with sudden sentimentality. Maybe a feeling of loss as well. All she felt was a rush of adrenaline which calmed into a thrum of excitement just beneath her skin. Coda had never felt so excited before. It was an alien feeling for her, the listless kid who used to shuffle around in the daytime, numb and bored, and fall into a dreamless sleep at night. It was like a calling.

It was a siren's song.

Coda opened the door and stepped out into the rain.

Outside it was cold and windy. The sharp draft slapped her face and sprayed water into her eyes. For a moment she was stunned and stood shivering with rigid shoulders pulled up to her ears. Only a few seconds had passed but Coda was already drenched, socks squelching in her boots. She held her canvas bag over her head and squinted up at the sky, blinking hard. She remembered the day she saw the balloon that brought meaning to her life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The main character has been introduced! But what's the plan... ? XD


End file.
